Dr KARL SHUKER

Zoologist, media consultant, and science writer, Dr Karl Shuker is also one of the best known cryptozoologists in the world. Author of such seminal works as Mystery Cats of the World (1989), The Lost Ark: New and Rediscovered Animals of the 20th Century (1993; greatly expanded in 2012 as The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals), In Search of Prehistoric Survivors (1995), and more recently Extraordinary Animals Revisited (2007), Dr Shuker's Casebook (2008), Karl Shuker's Alien Zoo: From the Pages of Fortean Times (2010), Cats of Magic, Mythology, and Mystery (2012), and Mirabilis: A Carnival of Cryptozoology and Unnatural History (2013), his many fans have been badgering him to join the blogosphere for years. The CFZ Blog Network is proud to have finally persuaded him to do so.

REVIEWING DRAGONS IN ZOOLOGY, CRYPTOZOOLOGY, AND CULTURE

The year 1995 saw the publication of two books of
mine, one of which was Dragons: A Natural History
– a lavishly-illustrated volume in which I concentrated upon providing a series
of vibrant, lyrical retellings of famous and lesser-known dragon myths, legends,
and folktales from around the world, arranged into chapters focusing upon
different morphological and natural history categories of dragon, and
interspersed throughout with smatterings of cryptozoological content and
snippets of other dragon-related background information. Over the years, it was
translated into over a dozen languages, has been reissued many times, and,
judging from its huge sales worldwide, may well be the most successful non-fiction
book on dragons ever published. So how could I follow that?

And yet I did want to follow it, because I'd always
planned to write an extremely comprehensive review of dragons in their entirety
– not just their myths, morphology, and natural history, but also providing
in-depth coverages of the real-life and possible cryptozoological influences
responsible for engendering dragons, and these mythical monsters' omnipresence
in human culture, both ancient and modern – from religion and the mystic arts
to the visual arts and literature, fashion to sport, tattoos to compute games,
rock music to dream interpretation, and mush more besides.

After extensive research, I finally wrote my
long-planned second dragons book – entitled Dragons in Zoology, Cryptozoology, and Culture – and saw it published in
2013 by Coachwhip Publications of Greenville, Ohio. It constitutes one of the
most comprehensive dragon-themed factual books ever published, is
sumptuously illustrated throughout in full colour, and today I was
delighted to see not one but two positive, encouraging reviews of it.

By one of those wonderful coincidences that happen
only rarely but help to restore one's belief that the world may indeed be a good
place to inhabit when they do happen, today I received in the post two
different magazines, only to discover that they each contained an excellent review
of my newest, second dragons book. One was written by fellow dragons aficionado
Richard Freeman, and appeared in #52 (February 2015) of the Centre for Fortean
Zoology's magazine Animals and Men; the other was written by
longstanding cryptozoogical researcher Matt Salusbury, and appeared in #330
(August 2015) of Fortean Times.

So for those of you who haven't read my new dragons
book and may be interested in doing so, here are these two reviews, each one a
two-pager. Please click the images to enlarge them for reading purposes.

My sincere thanks to Rich and Matt for their
reviews, which have made all of the toil researching such a vast albeit
fascinating subject as dragons worthwhile.

If you'd like to read more about my new dragons book,
please click here to read its own page on
my website, which also includes direct links to Amazon's USA and UK sites for anyone wishing to purchase a copy. Also,
please click here if you'd like to
purchase a copy via its publisher, Coachwhip Publications (which is
also the publisher of my definitive Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals). Click here
and here for more information about my new dragons book as posted on ShukerNature; and click here and here
to read two lengthy excerpts from it exclusively on ShukerNature.

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